A Column of 40 Hearses Meets the Victims of the Malaysia Airlines Crash

EINDHOVEN AIR BASE, the Netherlands — A week ago, they had been packing their bags, preparing for conferences, family visits and vacations. Now, they were returning to the Netherlands in coffins, victims of the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, shot out of the skies above eastern Ukraine.

At 3:48 p.m. on Wednesday, a military cargo plane belonging to the Australian Air Force touched down at the Eindhoven Air Base, home to the Royal Netherlands Air Force, in the southern Netherlands. On board were 24 coffins. Soon afterward, a second, smaller plane landed, its thundering propellers piercing the silence. It was carrying 16 coffins.

Along the tarmac, flags representing the 17 nationalities of the 298 victims of the crash stood at half-staff, their lines clinging to the flagpoles in the warm summer wind.

Relatives, friends and government representatives waited as the planes taxied to a stop. Among those gathered were King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima.

After the propeller plane switched off its engines, a heavy silence filled the air. Columns of military representatives appeared from the western side of the airfield, marching in formation toward the planes. Forty black, identical hearses followed them.

There were no speeches or obvious tears, but a lone soldier played the “Last Post” on his trumpet, a tradition in the Netherlands during the annual remembrance for those who died in the Second World War.

One minute of silence followed, on the airfield and in the rest of the Netherlands. A public television station, NOS, reported that church bells had rung across the country right after the planes landed. Truckers, many of whom had tied black ribbons to their vehicles, stopped on the sides of highways. In shops and coffeehouses, music was stopped.

Image

Flowers showered over a convoy of hearses carrying coffins of the victims of the Malaysia Airlines jet crash.CreditRemko De Waal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

At the airfield, soldiers representing all of the Dutch armed forces entered the planes after the drivers of the fleet of hearses opened the back doors of their vehicles simultaneously.

After all 40 coffins had been loaded in, the cars left in a column toward Hilversum, an hour and a half north. One of the Netherlands’ main highways, the A2, was partly closed off. Along the highway and on overpasses, people, some crying, threw flowers. Cars driving in the other lane stopped as the hearses passed.

More bodies have been brought to Kharkiv, a government-controlled town in Ukraine, to await flights planned for Thursday and Friday.

Eventually all 298 victims of the attack are to be brought to the Netherlands, which is in charge of identifying and repatriating the remains.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: A Column of 40 Hearses Meets the Victims of the Malaysia Airlines Crash. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe